Got anywhere to be for the next hour? No? Good.
First up, a couple of simple facts. Most F1 races in Canada are pretty damn good. Antiques Roadshow is a bit dull. Well, this time one of them was beyond the most hopeful of expectations. And the other wasn’t on at all because of the former...
In the lead-up to the race, F1 had got itself into a spot of bother again with the Bahrain GP being on, off, on and off again more often that Ryan Giggs’s underpants, but with that political mess finally put to bed (Bahrain, not Giggs) we at last had the excitement of the practice sessions.
Perez turned up after his horrible Monaco shunt, declared himself fit and raring to go, then oddly did a few laps and changed his mind. Sauber bizarrely didn’t have their reserve driver with them, so whilst one of the team distracted Martin Whitmarsh, Peter Sauber nipped into the McLaren garage and kidnapped Pedro de la Rosa and shoved the bemused Spaniard into the cockpit before he’d realised what was happening. So short was the time available that he still had McLaren overalls on when FP2 started. And then the crashing started. Sutil, Kobayashi and D’Ambrosio all binned it, but the biggest scalp was Vettel’s, as he became the latest victim of the Wall of Champions. And a marshal fell over hilariously.
Quali saw Webber without KERS yet again and de la Rosa scraping walls with wheels, but the expected change of order was only partial – Seb still reigned, but Alonso and Massa were next up, with Webber 4th and Rosberg in 6th, sandwiched between Hamilton in front and Button behind.
Race day started out soggy and didn’t improve much before the start. The Safety Car led them away on what looked like being a long afternoon. Little did we know how right that was going to be. As the SC pulled in on lap 4, Alonso challenged Vettel but couldn’t quite manage to get by, and Hamilton got over-optimistic again and tried to clear Webber, sending the Australian into a spin.
Lewis wasn’t done either – on lap 8 he attempted to pass his team-mate along the pit straight, but failed to consider the fact that Button could see nothing except a wall of spray in his mirrors, and certainly not a plank in the sister car trying to squeeze past in a decreasing gap. The inevitable occurred and Hamilton limped along for half a lap before abandoning his knackered Macca, whilst a gobsmacked Button radioed the team to say “What was he doing?!”. Safety Car out, Button boldly switched to the intermediate tyres.
The SC handily nipped into the pits on lap 12 as the rain started and Button copped a drive-thru for speeding behind it, but was moving fast on the inbetweeny tyres. The weather seemed to find this a bit annoying, and promptly upgraded from “raining hard” to “cloudburst” and the SC was deployed once again, interestingly for the first time I can remember without there actually having been an incident – if you ignore the fact that someone seemed to be emptying a billion Olympic swimming pools onto the track at the same time.
By lap 25 swimming trunks were needed and the race was red-flagged. Might have to wait a bit, I thought. Probably won’t be long.
More than 2 hours later (following some high quality ornithology that probably had Bill Oddie strangely excited from Couldthard & Brundle) the race finally got under way again... behind the SC.
The precipitation did stop though and the track began to dry, and Jenson was moving up through the field until he met the immovable force that is Mr Eyebrows in the Ferarri. Fernando removed the gap Jenson was going for, but paid the price and said hello to a wall, whilst JB limped back to the pits with a puncture. Last place. Poo – that’s his afternoon over then. No-one explained that to Jense though...
Paul di Resta was having a great weekend and running 5th on merit until a clumsy attempt on Heidfeld saw him wreck his front wing, and bag himself a drive-thru.
By lap 46, Schumacher was up to 4th and flying and with DRS enabled as conditions continued to improve, Webber got to be guinea pig as he switched to dry tyres. Schuey then bagged Massa & Kobayashi to move up to a stunning 2nd, and it began to look like he was heading for the podium.
Massa pirouetted and wiped the nose off his car on another stretch of the unforgiving wall, and Heidfeld ran into the back of a slow-away-from-the-corner Kobayashi, breaking his front wing sufficiently for it to snap off at speed and wedge under his car, leaving him tobogganing down an escape road.
And so the SC was back on track again. Hope he’s getting nectar points when he fills up – he’ll probably be able to get a tumble dryer from Argos. And another marshal fell over hilariously. Twice.
With the action now hitting frenzied levels, Webber tried to pass Schuey but took a short-cut across the corner, and had to let Michael back past. Jenson has continued with his stunning pace on the drying track and cleared both of them as they fought each other for position. With 2 laps left, Mark finally passed Michael.
Action all over, then? Nope. As Seb’s lead has ebbed away, Jenson closed in on the last lap, finally forcing Vettel into an unexpected error and nipping swiftly past for a startling victory, and the culmination of quite possibly the most exciting race for a couple of years.
With Vettel, Webber, Schumacher and Petrov safely home, it looked like Kobayashi was about to bag 6th when Massa clawed his way level and just nosed across the line ahead.
5 and a half hours of TV coverage (and well done to the BBC for sticking with it) – I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.
5 pit stops. A puncture. A drive-thru penalty. 2 collisions. 21st to 1st. Jenson shouldn’t have got a trophy – it should be a medal.
(Helping with my aching fingers - Queen's "Queen At The Beeb". Rock!)
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